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The little voice went on: “Very sorry, in fact, because if you’re hearing this, it means I’m gone. My room AI has heard about my death, and it knows to open this box if you come in here alone. It’s the best plan I could think of. Sorry to intrude on you like this, but it’s important. This is kind of an insurance policy, because I’ve got some things going on that need to continue even if I die, and I don’t want to tell anyone else here about them. And really at our age you can go any time, so I’m setting this up. If you’re hearing this, I need your help. Please take the envelope for Wang out to Io and give it to him in person. Wang and I and a few others are working on a couple of very important projects together, and we’ve been trying to keep completely offline with them, which is very difficult to do when we live so far apart. You can help me hugely by taking him his envelope. But please keep the matter entirely to yourself. Also, if you would let your Pauline read the other chip in your envelope and then destroy the chip, that would serve as a secure backup. They both are one-reads. I hate to do even this much. But I know you don’t usually link Pauline to other qubes, and if you would keep it that way, it would be better for our plan. Wang will explain more to you, as will Wahram from Titan. Good-bye, my Swan. I love you.”

That was it. Swan tried to listen to it again, but it was inert.

She put the other tab up to Pauline’s membrane, in the skin at the base of her neck. When Pauline said “Done” she put the inert tabs and the two remaining envelopes into her pocket and went to find Mqaret.

He was in his office, poking around in a 3-D image of what looked like a protein. “Look what I found,” Swan said. She explained what had happened.

“That box was locked,” Mqaret said. “I knew it was her jewelry, and I figured I would run into the key some time or other.”

He stared blankly at his envelope, seeming in no hurry to open it; possibly even a little afraid of it. Swan let him be, went out of the room. “Pauline,” she said after she left, “you got the contents of that tab?”

“Yes.”

“What was on it?”

“I am instructed to convey the information to Wang’s qube, on Io.”

“But tell me just generally what’s on it.”

Pauline did not reply, and after a while Swan cursed her and turned her off.

Both tabs were now inert; Alex’s ghost had departed. Swan was not entirely sorry. The shock of hearing Alex’s voice speaking to her was still causing her to tremble.

She went back into Mqaret’s office. He was white-faced, his mouth a little knot. He looked up at her.

“She gave you something to take to Io?”

“Yes. Do you know what it’s about?”

“No. But I do know Alex had an inner group of especially close associates. Wahram was one of them, and Wang too.”

“And what were they up to?”

Mqaret shrugged. “She spared me that kind of thing. But I could see she thought it was important. Something about Earth, I think.”

Swan thought it over. “If it was important, and she was keeping things off the record, she would have known her death might cause problems. So she left us these little recordings.”

“It was like her ghost,” Mqaret said shakily. “She spoke to me.”

“Yes,” Swan said, unable to say more. “Well… I guess I’m going to take the third envelope she left to Io, like she told me to.”

“Good,” Mqaret said.

“Wahram already asked me to go out there, now that I think of it. And he kept asking if she left us anything for him.”

Mqaret nodded. “He was part of it.”

“Yes. And that inspector too. So I guess I’ll go. But I don’t think I want to tell him about these messages. Alex didn’t say anything about that.”

“He may guess, just by the fact you’re going.”

“Let him guess.”

Now Mqaret regarded her with a sympathetic squint. “You’re going to have to figure things out as best you can. You may even have to step in and do some of the things Alex would have done.”

“How can I do that? No one can do that.”

“You don’t know. Pauline will help you, and maybe this Titan of yours also. And if you have to act in Alex’s place-she would have liked that.”

“Maybe.” Swan was not so sure.

“Alex will have had a plan. She always did.”

Swan sighed, lanced again by the thought of Alex’s absence. These ghostly messages were not even close to an adequate replacement for her. “All right, then. I’ll go out to see this Wang.”

“Good. And be ready to act.”

S wan found out where the offworld diplomats still in town were staying, went to the terrace where the Saturnian delegation had been housed. When she entered the courtyard of the place, she immediately came on Wahram, head down as he conferred with the little police inspector, Jean Genette. The sight of the two of them together gave her a shock, and something in their body language said they were well acquainted. Co-conspirators, by the look of them.

Cheeks burning, Swan approached them. “What’s this?” she demanded. “I didn’t know you two knew each other.”

Neither of them at first replied.